Roman and Greek Palisading

were encamped, but yet being clearly informed
that they had entered Thessaly, gave orders
to all his men to cut stakes to carry with them,
ready for use at any moment. This seems impossible
to Greek habits, but to those of Rome it is easy.

The methods of forming palisades among the Greeks and Romans.

For
the Greeks find it difficult to hold even their
sarissae on the march, and can scarcely bear
the fatigue of them; but the Romans strap
their shields to their shoulders with leathern
thongs, and, having nothing but their javelins in their hands,
can stand the additional burden of a stake. There is also
a great difference between the stakes employed by the two
peoples. The Greeks hold that the best stake is that which
has the largest and most numerous shoots growing round the
stem; but the Roman stakes have only two or three side shoots,
or at most four; and those are selected which have these
shoots on one side only. The result is that their porterage is
very easy (for each man carries three or four packed together),
and they make an exceedingly secure palisade when put
into use. For the Greek palisading, when set in the front of
the camp, in the first place can easily be pulled down; for
since the part that is firm and tightly fixed in the ground is
single, while the projecting arms of it are many and large, two
or three men can get hold of the same stake by its projecting
arms, and easily pull it up; and directly that is done, its
breadth is so great that a regular gateway is made: and because
in such a palisade the stakes are not closely interlaced or
interwoven with each other, when one is pulled up the part
next to it is made insecure. With the Romans it is quite
different. For as soon as they fix their stakes, they interlace
them in such a manner that it is not easy to know to which of
the stems fixed in the ground the branches belong, nor on
which of these branches the smaller shoots are growing.
Moreover, it is impossible to insert the hand and grasp them,
owing to the closeness of the interlacing of the branches and
the way they lie one upon another, and because the main
branches are also carefully cut so as to have sharp ends. Nor,
if one is got hold of, is it easy to pull up: because, in the first
place, all the stakes are sufficiently tightly secured in the
ground to be self-supporting; and, in the second place, because
the man who pulls away one branch must, owing to the close
interlacing, be able to move several others in its train; and it is
quite unlikely that two or three men should happen to get hold
of the same stake. But even if, by the exertion of enormous
force, a man has succeeded in pulling one or another up, the
gap is scarcely perceptible. Considering, therefore, the vast
superiority of this method, both in the readiness with which
such stakes are found, the ease with which they are carried,
and the security and durability of the palisade made with
them, it is plain, in my opinion, that if any military operation
of the Romans deserves to be admired and imitated, it is this.

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